Figuring out what to do with Trump's base means admitting they are racist

Associations of Jews with, specifically, gold go back pretty far. It’s one of those hoary old tropes like the various sorts of blood libel. So maybe we’re just seeing new forms of that crop up.

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Yes. Precisely. That is the thing that is the problem. It is the only thing that is problematic in police killings. Because, as we all know, multiple issues cannot intersect to create worse problems for those that are, to pull a random example out of my hat, e.g. both under threat from a potentially dangerous cop and, because of skin color or other social signal, likely to be treated worse in social interactions. Never happens.
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Indeed, we (and I include myself) want to ensure that the unearned privileges that we have enjoyed by virtue of our birth (more or less) continue. We have a culture that we do not wish to see extinguished by “others” who do not share our beliefs.

And that is pretty much the identical motivation of most of the Trump supporters… If we can understand our motives and are sympathetic to those motives, then we should be able to understand (even if we don’t support) their motives.

The only real difference is that the more odious Trump supporters would restrict the few billion who look different from them, while we restrict those who have a different citizenship. Statistically, if you look at who is restricted, it’s almost identical, barring a few whites in one direction and a few non-whites in the other.

Now, I personally believe being citizenist is better than being racist, but again, it’s a matter of degree, not kind.

I suspect it’s been around since we came out of the trees. I strongly suspect that logic and rationality is not an evolutionarily stable strategy.

Whoa! Yes I’m quoting you out of context and that’s not fair. Admittedly. But, damn.

When Orwell said “he who controls the past, controls the future” he was basically just paraphrasing Marcus Tullius Cicero. The idea that you can a manipulate people by influencing their views of the past is ancient.

If that’s less than coherent I’m blaming Android rather than six pints of love stout.

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Yet another chance to post this song :slight_smile:

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Fair enough, but I’d argue it got kicked up a notch with the spring time of nations and the advent of modern mass media. “The people” got more involved in the shaping and use of history as a political weapon and attempts to pin down THE TRUTH became more central to controlling and shaping “the people.”

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This is what scares me. People who literally believe in a literal Rapture. They will encourage terrorism and actively bring about the destruction of the world, just so literal Jesus* will come back and save them.

*not literal Jesus, but their false interpretation of a folkloric version of a literal Jesus.

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Except that I accept that people can change citizenship and it is something people take on. I doubt Trump people feel the same way about race. Also, unlike Trump supporters, I suspect most of us accept that immigration by…say…Muslims…is acceptable.

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Of course. But it crops up in some really weird places. Like Autism Denial has a weirdly racist element. The Ancient Aliens theory is basically an overwrought explanation of how brown people couldn’t possible be good at this civilization thing because they’re savages. The Aquatic Ape theory has weird ties to earlier racist ideas about human origins. Specifically multiple origin ideas that sit at the basis of racialism. And the Aquatic Ape thing leads directly into Cryptozoological ideas about Mermaids being real. Young Earth Creationist obsessions with locating real world Giants are drawn as much from those hoary old claims about all civilizations coming from Europe/Isreal/White people and the Browns being incapable of building anything as they are old religious and racist ideas about other Races being Nephilim, or Lost Tribes, or bearing the Mark of Caine. And then there’s the deep influence of Theosophy, Atlantis Weird, etc. All of which is drawn right out from Madam Blavatsky. Who was literally a proto-nazi. Both a shocking amount of long standing Racialist ideas, and the entire framework of modern conspiracy pseudo-history and psuedo-science are pulled directly from her writing.

ITS ALL CONNECTED. WAKE UP SHEEPLE.

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Yeah, I grok ya. I wonder if anyone has a done a history of this stuff. Maybe I should… it sort of fits into my intellectual wheel house, as there is some modern countercultural cross over on some of this stuff. There is a rich vein of sources to mine there which could work as a sort of secret history kind of thing…[quote=“Ryuthrowsstuff, post:275, topic:87585”]
WAKE UP SHEEPLE.
[/quote]

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It seems to be an increasing thread in the skeptic and debunker communities. Even as grouchy old white dudes like Dawkins run, fast and hard, in the other direction.

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Autism denial meaning vaccines and other environmental factors cause autism, or denying that autism exists?

People associated with the former tend to be very very white and upper middle class at least. In other words, they live in areas where autism diagnoses are common because people have better access to diagnosis and treatment. If they think it’s some kind of conspiracy against white people, I wouldn’t be surprised. I don’t understand it, but I don’t understand anything they think because it’s total bullshit.

They also tend to male-to-female ratio of autism cases. Boys got diagnosed far more often than girls historically, but with better diagnostic methods we’re finding that the rates are more equal than we thought. Autism just presents differently in girls than it usually does in boys.

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Wasn’t aware that was actually a thing. Was definitely talking about the frozen yogurt and Park Slope crowd. What little I’ve seen runs to the weirder end of the former. Star/moon children and what have. My kid isn’t autistic. My kid is new age geesus. With special sensitivities and spiritual needs.

ANYWAY. If you look at the current trash running around that crowd they’re all going on about the "CDC whistle blower". (OH GOD SCIENCE BASED MEDICINE IS DOWN!) Basically one of the researchers involved in the CDC attempts to replicate the vaccine/autism connection came out much later (ish, it seems more like he was airing interpersonal problems) claiming their was a connection between vaccines and autism if you data mined specifically for black male infants. The claim hasn’t held up, you control for cofactors and its not there.

But that’s unleashed a lot of weird from the McCarthy brigade. Much of it similar to the pro-life “abortion is making black men extinct!” sort. But some of it of the “well this explains why black people like crime so much” and “OMG but their IQs were already so much lower than fine upstanding white people” sort.

Have I mentioned sheeple yet today?

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There are also people who believe that peanut allergies are not a thing, that it’s something made up so that those kids will get special treatment at school.

We had a one of them at a school meeting. (And, incidentally, this was one of the same set of parents that completely flipped out on hearing there was a transgendered child in the school, and thankfully they never actually found out which one she was.)

Humanity is horrifying. I am going to go home and lay in the grass with my cats.

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Kittehs make all things better…

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I am coming around to this point of view myself. I think it got kicked up another notch by WWII, and another by the Internet, too. If it gets much worse everybody’s going to have to publish their own personal history books!

It’s raining now so me and the kittehs went inside :slight_smile:

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I recommend a tough love approach: “I love you anyway. Not because of, until you grow a cosmic brain, but in spite of, Hater. Just love.”

P.S. I am inspired by Judge Dredd. I used to own the comic series until I lost it in a poker game to a Hater and a cheater at 14…

P.P.S. I fuckin’ hate cheaters. I AM THE LAW!

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as the thread is done with the useful comments already…
there are big reprint collections of them out now. quite fun and very 1980s in retrospect.

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